A history and explanation of the evolution of slotless racing
HO Slot Cars have been around since the later 1950's, usually the tracks were for two cars and ran on DC power like the HO electric trains. But almost from the beginning there was the desire to have the cars able to change lanes, just as real cars did. The first attempt was to make a crossover section of track where the slots crossed in an "X" form. To make this work electrically, a second crossover section was required to switch the cars back to their original lanes on the samelap. This did allow cars to change lanes to run inside on a turn at one point and outside on another.
However, as we all know, real cars can drive anywhere on the track or highway, so finding a way to do this continued into the middle 1970's. The Ideal Toy Company was first to figure out a way to do this and get it into production. The guide slot was removed and walls were added to both sides of the two lane track. The cars themselves were made with a steering system that could be activated remotely by a switch on the speed controller.
The cars were set up to steer either hard right or hard left and then slide along the wall on either side of the track until called upon to change lanes. It was a simple idea, yet allowed the cars to change lanes anywhere on the track that the drivers wanted them to. It was also possible to use a modification of regular slot car track, controllers, and car designs, which allowed tooling costs to be somewhat reduced for manufacturing. For instance, the slot could be "filled in" with a center pick up rail and many regular slot car components would still be usable to make the new "slotless" cars.
The real problem was to make the cars able to "share" the same "ground" rail of the three rail system without shorting out the power pack, since one cars could be "positive" and the other "negative." With the three rail system, you could not use the regular Direct Current to power the cars. Yet to save costs, the cars had DC motors. The solution was to feed AC power to the controllers, since Alternating Current, with extremely rapid positive/negative cycles, or "waves" is far less likely to short, and therefore can "share" a common "ground." A further refinement of the design was to add diodes to the controllers that only allow current to flow in one direction, thus not allowing any minor "feedback" of electrical shorts to the power pack. They were also of a type that converted AC power to DC which was then sent to the track rails, and thus the cars. The controllers were the same as regular ones with sliding resister speed control, but a lane changing switch and diodes were added to make the lane changing possible.
Ideal, Aurora, and Tyco placed the most effort into slotless racing, but each tended to try variations of similar ideas. They all tried steering the cars with the rear wheels, and using different ways to cause the cars to steer, but eventually the system that they found was most successful was a front steer chassis using the car's motor to change lanes.
Lane changing was accomplished by instantly changing the direction the motor's armature rotated. The motor driving clockwise turned the steering one way and then in counter clockwise turned it the opposite way! This was possible because the rear axle was equipped with a very basic "differential," somewhat like real automobiles use. A tiny clutching mechanism allowed the car to "coast" for the split second the motor was reversing itself, and drive either a "crown gear" on the left or one on the right of this differential. No matter which way the motor was turning to steer the car, the car itself always moved forward.
Once sharing power from one lane to another was worked out, another dream of slot car racers would also work; adding a third car. This car would run at a bit slower speed and in just one lane (at least as originally conceived.) Two drivers could race each other, but also have to get around a third car as well. Ideal called this a "Drone Car" in it's patent application, but in manufacture it was called a "Jam Car." (Eventually, all brands' third cars became known generically as "Jam Cars.") By picking up power from all three rails, it could run with just one race car on the track with it or two. As soon as power came from one or both controllers, the Jam Car ran.
Ideal originally made this car with the front wheels set toward the right wall. Later a "Left Lane Jam Car" was produced, and then a Zig Zag car which changed lanes on it's own to confound competitors. Unfortunately, the left lane Jam Car would slide to the outside lane at speed in a turn by centrifugal force just like the race cars, often stalling out half way between the inside and outside lanes. The Zig Zag car suffered from stalling in lane changes as well.
Aurora also made their own version of Jam Car and a lane changing car called the "Road Blocker." The Aurora cars were better due to the power packs producing more power so that they ran faster than the Ideal cars and therefore were more able to change lanes without stalling as easily. Yet stalling remained a problem.
Tyco came up with a Jam Car which could be used in either the right or left lane for it's Command Control sets by changing the position of a chassis mounted wire guide that rode in a groove beside the track walls of both lanes. Of course, this required the track to be wider than other brands. It was, in fact, a "slot car" that had the slot along the track walls instead of the middle of the lanes.
But as with Ideal's and Aurora's third cars, they drained power from which ever race car was in the same lane as the Jammer, making it harder to pass. With their stalling problems, power drain of one lane, and their causing three car pile ups which could cause a massive electrical short circuit, these third cars fell from favor with each manufacturer, and were eventually made available only by separate sale.
As the pioneer of lane changing HO race sets, Ideal "Total Control Racing" (TCR) sold a lot of very basic oval track sets in 1977 and '78. They added more track, road course sets, and additional types of track sections over the years. Unfortunately, the power packs did not provide enough voltage to allow the cars to change lanes efficiently. Until you learned to drive well, the cars tended to "stall" without enough momentum to make it from one lane to another. The cars and power packs were upgraded a couple of times and were better, but the company eventually failed (though not the fault of the TCR system.) Ideal's designs and tooling went to Majorette, a large toy company in France. Majorette continued to improve the system and successfully manufactured the upgraded TCR line until recent years.
Ideal had "shown the way," but others were watching and working on their own variations of lane changing. Aurora and Tyco put the most effort into slotless racing, but also suffered through learning how to make the system work better. Early designs were somewhat similar to Ideal's "Mark 1 and 2" chassis, and all early lane changing designs also suffered from power packs that didn't put out enough voltage for efficient lane changing. The power problem was also partially driven by government limits of electrical voltages for toys which could be used by children all those years ago.
Aurora had been one of the original pioneers of HO slot car racing, starting with it's Model Motoring sets in the late fifties. These sets were seen as additions to HO model railroad layouts, but quickly became much more popular to race cars. They were made with a crude "vibrator motor" to fit within the near accurately scaled HO vehicles. Aurora continued to create better and better chassis and in the early eighties had gotten into slotless racing as a natural evolution of their HO line. Aurora's engineering staff were imaginative and skilled.
After trying rear steer designs, they decided to go with a front steering design which used a solenoid mounted on the front of the chassis and called this the "Ultra 5" system in manufacture. When the switch on the controller moved one way, the solenoid pin instantly moved the steering linkage right, and when the switch was moved the other way, the solenoid instantly moved it left. The problem was that the heavy "nose" weight caused the cars to spin out easily, and was complicated and costly to manufacturer.
They perfected a front steering design as much as was then possible with the Speedsteer cars. This used changing motor direction to turn a worm gear on the front of the motor, which in turn moved a wire "steering arm" on the right side "steering knuckle." A "tie rod" linked the right and left steering knuckle, much like real automobiles. The system worked very well, but the weak link in it was the wire, which tended to break with a lot of crashing.
Unfortunately, Aurora also failed (though again, not due to slotless cars) and the Speedsteer design was taken over by Tyco, who had also been making slotless sets and cars. Like Ideal and Aurora, Tyco had struggled with rear steer chassis they called Command Control. With the rights to the Speedsteer design in hand and having negotiated for the rights to use the name "TCR" in America which was owned by Majorette, Tyco opened a new chapter in their slotless story in 1991 with their Tyco TCR sets.
The chassis of the Tyco TCR cars was virtually the same as the Aurora Speedsteer chassis! Many of the parts for both cars even interchange! The major difference was that the Speedsteer worm gear and wire steering set up was replaced with a silicone sleeve on the front motor shaft which moved the tie rod directly. It eliminated the costs and weakness of the thin wire and also the worm gear, but the steering proved less reliable. Tyco's adventure in slotless racing closed at the end of the 1993 production run, and within a few years Tyco itself was gone, taken over by Mattel Toys.
A problem for those of us who run these cars is that being almost Speedsteer "clones" the TCR chassis is different in dimensions as the rest of the Tyco line, so there is a problem figuring out what Tyco slot car bodies fit the slotless chassis. The slotless chassis are both short wheelbase and came in wide and narrow variations. However, the advantage to using the Tyco TCR system is that it was made later than the others, and learned from their efforts. While Tyco TCR has been out of production for over twenty years, a fair supply of NOS (New-Old Stock) track, cars, and parts remain available. Probably the biggest stock of slotless items is at www.slotcarcentral.com .
A few other toy companies dabbled in slotless racing, such as Lionel and Matchbox, but were not as successful as Ideal, Aurora, and Tyco. This was probably because they didn't expend as much effort as the "big three." What really "did in" slotless racing was the coming of relatively inexpensive radio control cars in the late seventies. As the R/C market got stronger, slotless customers were drawn away. In recent years modern electronics have given rise to Digital Slot Cars.
Yet Digital Slot Cars CAN NOT change lanes at will, but must change at specific track sections, actually an updated variation on the old crossover tracks of the early days. After all these years only the old slotless systems can change lanes anywhere on the race track!
However, as we all know, real cars can drive anywhere on the track or highway, so finding a way to do this continued into the middle 1970's. The Ideal Toy Company was first to figure out a way to do this and get it into production. The guide slot was removed and walls were added to both sides of the two lane track. The cars themselves were made with a steering system that could be activated remotely by a switch on the speed controller.
The cars were set up to steer either hard right or hard left and then slide along the wall on either side of the track until called upon to change lanes. It was a simple idea, yet allowed the cars to change lanes anywhere on the track that the drivers wanted them to. It was also possible to use a modification of regular slot car track, controllers, and car designs, which allowed tooling costs to be somewhat reduced for manufacturing. For instance, the slot could be "filled in" with a center pick up rail and many regular slot car components would still be usable to make the new "slotless" cars.
The real problem was to make the cars able to "share" the same "ground" rail of the three rail system without shorting out the power pack, since one cars could be "positive" and the other "negative." With the three rail system, you could not use the regular Direct Current to power the cars. Yet to save costs, the cars had DC motors. The solution was to feed AC power to the controllers, since Alternating Current, with extremely rapid positive/negative cycles, or "waves" is far less likely to short, and therefore can "share" a common "ground." A further refinement of the design was to add diodes to the controllers that only allow current to flow in one direction, thus not allowing any minor "feedback" of electrical shorts to the power pack. They were also of a type that converted AC power to DC which was then sent to the track rails, and thus the cars. The controllers were the same as regular ones with sliding resister speed control, but a lane changing switch and diodes were added to make the lane changing possible.
Ideal, Aurora, and Tyco placed the most effort into slotless racing, but each tended to try variations of similar ideas. They all tried steering the cars with the rear wheels, and using different ways to cause the cars to steer, but eventually the system that they found was most successful was a front steer chassis using the car's motor to change lanes.
Lane changing was accomplished by instantly changing the direction the motor's armature rotated. The motor driving clockwise turned the steering one way and then in counter clockwise turned it the opposite way! This was possible because the rear axle was equipped with a very basic "differential," somewhat like real automobiles use. A tiny clutching mechanism allowed the car to "coast" for the split second the motor was reversing itself, and drive either a "crown gear" on the left or one on the right of this differential. No matter which way the motor was turning to steer the car, the car itself always moved forward.
Once sharing power from one lane to another was worked out, another dream of slot car racers would also work; adding a third car. This car would run at a bit slower speed and in just one lane (at least as originally conceived.) Two drivers could race each other, but also have to get around a third car as well. Ideal called this a "Drone Car" in it's patent application, but in manufacture it was called a "Jam Car." (Eventually, all brands' third cars became known generically as "Jam Cars.") By picking up power from all three rails, it could run with just one race car on the track with it or two. As soon as power came from one or both controllers, the Jam Car ran.
Ideal originally made this car with the front wheels set toward the right wall. Later a "Left Lane Jam Car" was produced, and then a Zig Zag car which changed lanes on it's own to confound competitors. Unfortunately, the left lane Jam Car would slide to the outside lane at speed in a turn by centrifugal force just like the race cars, often stalling out half way between the inside and outside lanes. The Zig Zag car suffered from stalling in lane changes as well.
Aurora also made their own version of Jam Car and a lane changing car called the "Road Blocker." The Aurora cars were better due to the power packs producing more power so that they ran faster than the Ideal cars and therefore were more able to change lanes without stalling as easily. Yet stalling remained a problem.
Tyco came up with a Jam Car which could be used in either the right or left lane for it's Command Control sets by changing the position of a chassis mounted wire guide that rode in a groove beside the track walls of both lanes. Of course, this required the track to be wider than other brands. It was, in fact, a "slot car" that had the slot along the track walls instead of the middle of the lanes.
But as with Ideal's and Aurora's third cars, they drained power from which ever race car was in the same lane as the Jammer, making it harder to pass. With their stalling problems, power drain of one lane, and their causing three car pile ups which could cause a massive electrical short circuit, these third cars fell from favor with each manufacturer, and were eventually made available only by separate sale.
As the pioneer of lane changing HO race sets, Ideal "Total Control Racing" (TCR) sold a lot of very basic oval track sets in 1977 and '78. They added more track, road course sets, and additional types of track sections over the years. Unfortunately, the power packs did not provide enough voltage to allow the cars to change lanes efficiently. Until you learned to drive well, the cars tended to "stall" without enough momentum to make it from one lane to another. The cars and power packs were upgraded a couple of times and were better, but the company eventually failed (though not the fault of the TCR system.) Ideal's designs and tooling went to Majorette, a large toy company in France. Majorette continued to improve the system and successfully manufactured the upgraded TCR line until recent years.
Ideal had "shown the way," but others were watching and working on their own variations of lane changing. Aurora and Tyco put the most effort into slotless racing, but also suffered through learning how to make the system work better. Early designs were somewhat similar to Ideal's "Mark 1 and 2" chassis, and all early lane changing designs also suffered from power packs that didn't put out enough voltage for efficient lane changing. The power problem was also partially driven by government limits of electrical voltages for toys which could be used by children all those years ago.
Aurora had been one of the original pioneers of HO slot car racing, starting with it's Model Motoring sets in the late fifties. These sets were seen as additions to HO model railroad layouts, but quickly became much more popular to race cars. They were made with a crude "vibrator motor" to fit within the near accurately scaled HO vehicles. Aurora continued to create better and better chassis and in the early eighties had gotten into slotless racing as a natural evolution of their HO line. Aurora's engineering staff were imaginative and skilled.
After trying rear steer designs, they decided to go with a front steering design which used a solenoid mounted on the front of the chassis and called this the "Ultra 5" system in manufacture. When the switch on the controller moved one way, the solenoid pin instantly moved the steering linkage right, and when the switch was moved the other way, the solenoid instantly moved it left. The problem was that the heavy "nose" weight caused the cars to spin out easily, and was complicated and costly to manufacturer.
They perfected a front steering design as much as was then possible with the Speedsteer cars. This used changing motor direction to turn a worm gear on the front of the motor, which in turn moved a wire "steering arm" on the right side "steering knuckle." A "tie rod" linked the right and left steering knuckle, much like real automobiles. The system worked very well, but the weak link in it was the wire, which tended to break with a lot of crashing.
Unfortunately, Aurora also failed (though again, not due to slotless cars) and the Speedsteer design was taken over by Tyco, who had also been making slotless sets and cars. Like Ideal and Aurora, Tyco had struggled with rear steer chassis they called Command Control. With the rights to the Speedsteer design in hand and having negotiated for the rights to use the name "TCR" in America which was owned by Majorette, Tyco opened a new chapter in their slotless story in 1991 with their Tyco TCR sets.
The chassis of the Tyco TCR cars was virtually the same as the Aurora Speedsteer chassis! Many of the parts for both cars even interchange! The major difference was that the Speedsteer worm gear and wire steering set up was replaced with a silicone sleeve on the front motor shaft which moved the tie rod directly. It eliminated the costs and weakness of the thin wire and also the worm gear, but the steering proved less reliable. Tyco's adventure in slotless racing closed at the end of the 1993 production run, and within a few years Tyco itself was gone, taken over by Mattel Toys.
A problem for those of us who run these cars is that being almost Speedsteer "clones" the TCR chassis is different in dimensions as the rest of the Tyco line, so there is a problem figuring out what Tyco slot car bodies fit the slotless chassis. The slotless chassis are both short wheelbase and came in wide and narrow variations. However, the advantage to using the Tyco TCR system is that it was made later than the others, and learned from their efforts. While Tyco TCR has been out of production for over twenty years, a fair supply of NOS (New-Old Stock) track, cars, and parts remain available. Probably the biggest stock of slotless items is at www.slotcarcentral.com .
A few other toy companies dabbled in slotless racing, such as Lionel and Matchbox, but were not as successful as Ideal, Aurora, and Tyco. This was probably because they didn't expend as much effort as the "big three." What really "did in" slotless racing was the coming of relatively inexpensive radio control cars in the late seventies. As the R/C market got stronger, slotless customers were drawn away. In recent years modern electronics have given rise to Digital Slot Cars.
Yet Digital Slot Cars CAN NOT change lanes at will, but must change at specific track sections, actually an updated variation on the old crossover tracks of the early days. After all these years only the old slotless systems can change lanes anywhere on the race track!